


Cry to Me

by soyforramen



Category: Archie Comics, Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Dancing, F/M, mechanic!betty, pre-season 1 fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:24:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soyforramen/pseuds/soyforramen
Summary: Quick one-shot.  When Betty and Jughead find themselves stood up by a certain red-head, a little dancing goes a long way.





	Cry to Me

**Author's Note:**

> Because this song has been on constant rotation in my playlist. Pre-Season 1.

The cicadas, as loud and angry as he was about the heat, were keeping Jughead company while he sat on the Andrews’ front steps waiting, once again, for Archie to return home. Plans had been made weeks before to go to the Bijou’s annual Monster Fest, and once again Archie had bailed on him without a call. Ever since Archie had made the football team (nothing more than a place for boys with too much testosterone and far too little common sense) nights like these were becoming more and more common. Lately waiting around for Archie was becoming second nature, a prelude to actually hanging out with him. 

Jughead idly wonders whether he’d be waiting around in the dark if things hadn’t changed at home. A loud clanging of metal upon concrete followed by a very feminine curse from next door catches his attention, and he realizes he’s probably not the only one who’s been stood up by Boy Wonder. The radio accompanies him down the sidewalk and back up to the Cooper’s garage, old music that even his parents wouldn’t have listened to in their youth. Bright pink high tops under a car greet him as he enters the garage, and he squats down next to them.

“What’s the news, Coop?” There’s a thump and another muttered curse. Betty rolls herself out from under the car and Jughead winces at the red mark on her forehead. He mutters an apology, always the reason for something going wrong, and stands to leave.

“You just startled me is all, Jughead,” Betty says while rubbing at her forehead. “Why aren’t you at the dance? I thought Ethyl asked you?”

“The Jones’ men don’t dance,” he says. Betty raises an eyebrow and he shrugs. “And I don’t care for the forced socialization of it all. Why aren’t you?”

Betty sighs and fidgets with the wrench in her hand. “Archie promised to take me. But Nancy told me he’d asked Ginger instead. And when he never showed up -“ it was her turn to shrug this time. “It’s silly, but I keep thinking that maybe one day,” she trails off and stares out of the garage towards the dark house next door.

“Why didn’t you go without him?” Jughead asks, already knowing the answer. It was Archie who Betty wanted to go with, Archie and no one else. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, Jughead’s known the answer for a long, long time.

“Because no one else will dance with me,” Betty finally says in a small voice. She wraps her arms around her knees and hugs herself. “They all want to dance with someone prettier, or older. Or someone with ‘experience.’”

Jughead gives her a puzzled expression and feigns innocence. “Didn’t you take dance for P.E. last year? Doesn’t that count as experience?”

Betty’s laugh is short and flat, but he’d prefer that over how she sounds when talking about no one wanting her. It was a ridiculous thought, she was conventionally attractive, sweet, and intelligent, but despite all of that Jughead wasn’t ignorant of how often Betty was passed over for her older sister. 

“You know what I mean,” she says.

“Someone would ask you to dance,” Jughead tells her. He glances at the clock. “There’s still another hour before Weatherbee shuts the social experiment down. And Doiley does owe me a favor.”

Betty shakes her head. “I can’t go now. I look like I belong in a 40’s newsreel,” she says with a gesture to her smeared overalls. There’s a smudge of oil on the bridge of her nose, and his hands twitch with a need to brush it away. He crosses his arms, not trusting himself, and leans against the standing tool box behind him.

“Betty the Riveter. Who knows? Might make you the Riverdale’s next Monroe.”

She snorts at that image.

The radio switches over to a different song, one Jughead had heard plenty of times at Pop’s with the early morning crowds. Their tastes tended towards the songs of their youth when given full range of the jukebox, the classically old genre of heartache and long lasting love, untouched by cynicism and full of optimism even in the throes of misery. 

Struck by an entirely un-Jughead like notion (an entirely Archie notion, if you will), he walks over to the radio and turns the volume up. Soft enough to avoid the ire of Mrs. Cooper, but still loud enough to fill the garage up enough to push Betty’s heartache to tomorrow. 

Jughead holds his hand out as the singer begins to croon, ‘When you’re baby, leaves you all alone.’ “Dance with me?”

For the first time since he’d wandered over, Betty’s lips quirk into a smile. “I thought the Jones’ men don’t dance?”

“For you, I’ll make an exception.” 

Betty glances down at her overalls again, sucking her bottom lip in to worry at it with her teeth. “I don’t want to ruin your clothes.”

Jughead rolls his eyes and pulls her to her feet. “I’ll have outgrown these in a week, and the shirt’s already ruined by Pop’s cuisine. The oil will only add a sense of class to it.” 

It’s a half lie, of course. He’d just gotten the two-inches-too-long pants second hand from a garage sale, while the shirt had been one he’d found long since abandoned in the back of his father’s closet. But whatever kind of lie it might be, it was enough to get Betty swaying to the music. Her hands are rough from the oil and grime still on them, but his offer of dance brings a lightness to her that has been missing for a while.

“So what do we do now?” he asked.

Betty giggles and places his hands on her waist as she slips her arms around his shoulders. “We just, move.”

When she says it, it sounds so simple, but Jughead hadn’t ever let himself get this physically close to a girl he wasn’t related to. It was odd, but not horrible, he decides. But it’s also not as great as the locker room talk would have you believe. It just is. 

“I didn’t realize you liked this kind of music,” Betty murmurs on their third shuffle around the garage. He must look confused, because she adds, “You’re humming along.”

Jughead flushes. And then frowns, because there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This is Betty, after all. “They play it at Pop’s sometimes. I guess I just picked it up through osmosis.”

Betty makes a noise - something noncommittal, something that could mean nothing, or maybe everything - and leans into him. He realizes she’s looking at Archie’s house, and the thought brings him back to why he’s here. To help her forget about Archie for a little while. After all, her heart belongs to Archie while her mind was forever on Archie. They were the All American Couple, fated to be, while he was just the good friend. 

And Jughead and Betty are nothing more just good friends. An ugly dark thing flashes through his chest as that thought, and he spun her as if to push it away from bother of them. Betty’s attention turns back to Jughead, and she laughs at the unexpected move. In a fit of playfulness, he dips her. It isn’t until he tries to bring her back up that he realizes that wasn’t the smartest move.

“Betts, you’re going to have to help me here,” he mutters. She erupts into a fit of giggles and his face flushes at his lack of dexterity. That moment brings something new to their relationship, something different than long term friends, and for the next half hour they continue on in simply playing at dance. They danced in all the ways they knew how - the Twist, a horribly uncoordinated version of the Foxtrot, and an even worse version of the Bunny Hop. Slow dancing, line dancing, fake on pointe dancing. 

For that moment they forgot about the problems weighing on them, or at least until Alice Cooper came around the corner to put an end to it. She stares at Jughead, never wavering and inescapable, before turning to Betty.

“Betty, it’s almost your bedtime. I expect you inside in ten minutes.”

“Yes, m’am,” Betty offers. 

Mrs. Cooper nods and sends one last glance towards Jughead, and heads back to the house.

“Thanks, Juggie,” Betty says once her mother is out of earshot. 

She begins to pick up the tools around her, and he hands her a long metal thing that looked more at home in the Inquisition than in a home garage. “For what?”

“For being there for me,” she says. Her soft smile makes his inside shift around to make room for something else. Something new, and foreign, and unwanted.

“I really do appreciate it.”

Jughead clears his throat and makes a point to look anywhere else but her. “Don’t worry about it.”

It isn’t long until they’ve cleaned up the garage, and he lingers while she washes her hands in the sink. A strong scent of manufactured oranges washes through the air, and memories of his father hit him. Of his father, fresh from working on the old Ford, scrubbing his hands under the garden hose; of his father, fresh from a long days work scrubbing up before dinner. Jughead shoves those thoughts to the back of his mind, his anger at F.P. still too difficult to deal with now.

Betty shuts off the lights, and Jughead follows her down the drive to the road, unsure of why he doesn’t want to let her leave just yet. He tries to tell himself it’s because he has nowhere else to go, but even he isn’t that good at lying to himself. She stops suddenly and turns towards him, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Thanks again, Juggie,” she says in that overly polite Cooper manner.

He shrugs and shoves his hands in his pockets, unsure of why she’s so grateful. “Don’t mention it. You can always cry to me when Archie does something stupid.”

Before he can process what’s happening, Betty is up on her tiptoes and kissing him on the cheek. She waves and bounds off to her house before he can say another word.

Jughead stands there watching after her, felling like all those sappy movies Jellybean loves to watch on the weekends. For a brief moment he lets himself think that maybe, just maybe, he might have a shot. That there might be something there that could overcome the ‘Archie’ of it all. 

A car drive by on the quiet street, and he reminds himself that the good girl next door never ends up with the weird kid from the wrong side of the tracks. He is, after all, the Duckie to her Andie. For him, though, friendship is enough. 

His steps are lighter as he makes his way back to the Andrews front porch, humming to himself while he waits for his best friend to return home. And if Archie asks what’s got him in such a good mood, he’ll tell him ‘dancing.’


End file.
